Staying Put
The psychology of loyalty inside today’s Conservative Party
It is difficult to move around the Conservative Party these days without defections occurring. The most eye-catching story about the Conservatives has been Jenrick’s defection, followed by Braverman’s and Rosindell’s. Each has tried to frame their jump in much the same way: the old right is dead, and the new right is on the rise, so get with the programme and take the fight to Starmer. The hope to galvanise others to do the same, an effort matched by Reform’s courting of lower-level Tories.
The trade is a simple one. Reform wants to import the expertise, networks and reassuring presence of established Conservatives. It solves two issues for them. The first is social signalling. If that MP or councillor you know is moving over, and the same name appears with a new banner, the upstart party doesn’t look like much of a risk. The second is more practical. Reform knows that their first wave of inductees was often wacky. It conforms to my first rule of new parties: because the people who first join will be very political but outside the mainstream, they are likely to have weird personalities, views, or both. By getting Tories across, Farage’s outfit hopes to get people who aren’t total loons.
In return, they seek to provide political security. Conservative MPs and councillors will be looking at the polls and feeling an unfamiliar heat. In places the party has held since time immemorial, there is a threat that a turquoise wave will sweep away MPs and councillors. The message from Farage is clear – if you want to avoid this, come aboard. It is paired with a further argument that, by refusing to crossover, you would be allowing the left in.
Given the current polls and the Conservative Party’s seeming ambivalence about its slide towards being the fourth or even fifth-place party in British politics, the appeal is obvious. What is striking is that so far, few appear to be pulled over by it. Within the parliamentary party, the wave of defections has been far smaller than the dozens who quit Labour at the dawn of the SDP. It’s even smaller than the group that jumped to the Independent Group for Change when that emerged in the Corbyn/Brexit chaos. It raises an interesting question about who is staying and why – and what that means for the Tory Party in general.
